The day I drew this strip was also the final day of Dawngate's servers being available for play. I felt like doing something small to say goodbye to the game, and decided that since my intent for the backgrounds of the flashback was to look jumbled and confused, I'd also incorporate "splashes of color" in honor of one of my favorite Dawngate characters, Zeri.

While her mom DID convince her
she was not ready for this child
if it was anyone else
she still would have considered the option of sending her child to an agency
while it is regrettable
she could have said no
her mom did not force her to make adoption the only option
(not that i know).

Regardless of whether or not the mom convinced her to lie, the mom is a huge part at fault. It is wrong to pressure a young mother to adopt out a baby without the father’s blessing if the father is a decent and safe person.

I can’t decide if you actually believe that. The father has more than a right to be told. She does, indeed, need his ‘blessing’ to adopt the baby out if she put his name on the birth certificate. He has the absolute right to take that baby and raise it himself. There have been legal cases about this, where the birth father has won.

Not to mention it was absolutely a despicable thing for her to do, knowing he wanted the child. She should have walked away after giving the baby to him.

…what you are saying is exactly what I said should have happened. If the mother wants to give the kid up that’s entirely up to her, and if the father wants to keep it that should be entirely up to him.

Mikael, the way you said it made it sound like you were agreeing with Andi’s “right” to give the kids to strangers without Todd knowing about it. That is the part we are strongly disagreeing with, and your comment here makes it pretty clear that you didn’t mean it that way.

Once the child is in the world of the breathing, separate from the mother, it’s the responsibility of the mother to be up front about this with the father and find out what the father’s wishes are regarding the child. The mother doesn’t have to have anything to do with the child but she doesn’t have the right to force the father to abandon the child too.

In fact, pushing the father out of the picture has led to some heartbreaking cases where the father finds out about the kid later and then has the legal right to reclaim his child from the loving family that is raising them. And I have really mixed feelings about this, but the fault lies with the mother trying to keep the information away from him (except in cases of abuse/insanity/etc., where the kid’s safety was at risk if the dad knew about the kid… our system has some failings when it comes to situations like this).

So once the child is born, the dad (assuming not an abusive one) has the legal and ethical right to know about his child and to have a say in where that kid goes.

I think the point here is not Todd’s rights as a parent, which I agree Andi denied him (having an abortion would have been her decision alone, but she didn’t); the point is that Andi couldn’t have it both ways. If she gave Todd the baby to raise alone, their relationship would have been over, and she wanted to keep him. Once Amanda was born Andi’s choices were either to give the baby away and lie to Todd, or to give Todd the baby and lose him.

I think that’s what Dotcom meant—the father isn’t in the position to force the mother to do anything, but by the time the baby has been delivered, there is a pretty solid obligation to tell the father what happened to the child and give him a say in it.

If she really doesn’t want to raise the child, he may, and has every right to.

The basic human right of bodily autonomy (IE, the same reason you can’t be forced to donate a kidney) means that if a person who currently has a fetus gestating in their body (these people nearly always identify as “women” but the exceptions are worth not erasing) wants that fetus removed from their body, they are entitled:

1) to have it removed
2) to have medical assistance in removing it
3) to have their well-being prioritized in determining the details of removal.

Nothing, NOTHING, about this makes a BORN CHILD the mother’s sole property to dispose of however she pleases.

She convinced Andi when Todd didn’t show up for the birth (because of work and traffic). He wasn’t there, so Andi probably didn’t put his name on the birth certificate rendering his rights null and void (depending on the state, he may reclaim them with a DNA test).

“She’s gone, Todd. She’s not with us.” Actually, that wasn’t technically a lie. It became one when Todd believed she meant the baby died and Andi didn’t correct him, but I can understand why it’d be really hard for her to expand on it based off of Todd’s reaction.

He was too caught up in his own excitement to notice how freaking miserable she was. She shouldn’t have lied to him and the consequences were horrible, but damn he could have been more attentive to her mood… She looks absolutely horrid.

You just really wanna hate her, don’t you? 🙂 Anyhow, anyone who’s been pregnant understands you can’t hide *anything* when it comes to emotion. Those hormones are hell! I actually do have more sympathy for her here. Yes, Todd should have been paying more attention to her mood—not that it makes it right how she lied.

She loved him so much. But, in the end, she really didn’t want to have a baby. She didn’t want to be pregnant. She’s obviously either depressed or extremely anxious, and while she might have told Todd she was fine, there’s NO WAY she could have been acting normal throughout her whole pregnancy, especially toward the end.

Was Todd probably really caught up in the excitement of having a baby? Yes.

Was Andi hiding her real feelings because she was afraid of what he would think of her or say to her if she told him she didn’t want to have the baby he already loved so much? Definitely.

Her mother probably convinced her to give her baby up for adoption because she KNEW how much she DIDN’T want a child. And keeping that baby would have made her miserable. There’s a big chance she would have resented that child, or even Todd for a very long time.

And what if she had left Todd to be a single father? What would you have thought of her then? That she was selfish and immature and didn’t deserve to be with him? Probably.

She wasn’t ready to be a mother, and give up her life as a young adult. And if she had told Todd, he would have either been heartbroken, accepted it, but it WOULD have loomed over their relationship for the rest of their lives; or fought tooth and nail to have her keep the baby, and to make him happy she would have probably conceded.

There’s no good way this situation could have played out.

The one THING that was horrible and should have never happened was her telling Todd the baby was dead. That crossed too many lines. That lie will bite her in the ass SO HARD, and Todd will definitely resent her.

ok Excuse me! I have been pregnant and those nine months I hide my emotions more so then I ever hide them before. I was in terrible misserable pain and sickness but to make sure I didnt get fired I kept it all in! And While yes as a woman who has carried a child I will say this, Todd as the father who was willing to be completely in the child’s life and support his partner and child has rights to know. I’m not hating on Andi I get why she did it. But to tell him that the baby died must have killed him inside you have no idea how terrible guilt he must be feeling all these years knowing he lost his child and wasnt there for Andi when it happened. My husband couldnt be with me when I gave birth and it still eats him up inside for Todd not being able to be there and loose the baby must have been terrible. Now keep in mind if he finds out then he will have the guilt of knowing that he chose Selkie over his own daughter! There was an actual chance of Amanda being adopted by her birth father! do you guys realize this but he chose another over her. This is going to kill Amanda when she finds out

I think not only was he excited, but he thought Andi was worried that he didn’t want the baby and so he showed his excitement more to try and assure her; missing the mark on why she was unhappy. Also, pregnancy is not a magical happy time. It’s morning sickness, mood swings, cravings, worrying about getting gestational diabetes, manual work into preparing for the baby by getting the necessary supplies.

Sure. There are happy moments. But pregnancy overall is not all sugar and rainbows. Todd might have thought that Andi was upset because of her hormones, which is a likely possibility.

Frankly, it looks like giving the child up for adoption was the right choice to make. She didn’t want the kid (a good enough reason on its own), and Todd was so caught up in his own mood for *9 whole months* that he never noticed her at all–he’s a nice person and means well, but this inability to even notice the bleak state of someone he’s living with 24/7 kind of supports the fact that he also wasn’t emotionally ready for a kid (or, it appears, a serious long-term girlfriend). She should have maybe actively spoken about it, but beyond that it seems pretty obvious that she was upset anyway without having to bring it up. Yet he seems oblivious. Of course, this is her flashback, and it might be biased–we won’t know until later, maybe.

At any rate, lying was very much the wrong way to go about things. It says a lot of unpleasant things about both her and Todd that she felt she couldn’t tell him the truth. She doesn’t trust him to support her emotionally, which is kind of backed up by him not supporting her emotionally for the 9 months previously when she was obviously very sad. Maybe they both would have grown emotionally with a kid, and it would have been alright, but maybe not. They certainly weren’t ready for one when it was actually born. It’s better to already be ready for a kid before you have it than to scramble to mature after the kid is there (at the kid’s expense).

So, yeah. Right decision, but awful situation, and it was not executed in a good way at all. Again, I can’t help but wonder what her reasons for all this are–it’s worrying that there’s a good chance that it’s due to her and Todd’s relationship rather than for the good of the child.

Most of Amanda’s damage is being sent BACK to the orphanage by her first family. Part of the main reason adopted children usually fare better than foster kids is a stable (supposed to be) permanent family.

Amanda’s a brat, but also a product of an envirenment where she had a life only to be removed from it and faced with every potiential adoption as a rejection. She teases and kicks and screams because she wants to punish the world for what’s being done to her because it makes her feel better when someone else is having a worse time than her. It’s not healthy, she needs a therapist, but she’s still a poor little girl.

Nothing about this retelling indicates to me that she’s actually trying to get Amanda back for the right reasons. Maybe we’ll get to see her reasoning for this decision in (hopefully soon) updates, but I remain unconvinced that her ultimate motive for this decision is Todd and not Amanda.

Hmm… Yet nothing about it says she’s doing it for the wrong ones either. Maybe she just wanted closure originally—to find out Amanda was in a good home so she had peace of mind and (maybe) tell the truth to Todd… But Amanda is still at the care facility. So it is pretty human for Andi to want to take her back—especially if she’s trying to make changes. I’m sure some of her motivations are selfish, but it’s just as likely that some of them are also driven by her wanting to be a better person.

I get that, I really am trying to suspend the worst of my judgement against Andi. I’m kind of a slow learner but after the rest of the examples we’ve been given where we initially despise the character only to learn they have some redeeming qualities – I’m going to defer to Dave’s storytelling before I decide to hate her. I’m still up in the air on whether or not she’s trying to do the right thing to make up for what she did in the past or if she’s doing this so she can say to Todd “See, I’m responsible, too!” because he doesn’t see her as being responsible at all. It’s her timing on this decision that makes me question her motive.

except that she got Amanda’s name tattooed in a heart on her arm before even getting the call back from the orphanage. I still think she is doing this for Amanda and for herself (and if you think she is being selfish for trying to make things right then you really just hate her and nothing she can do will make you think otherwise)

I am beyond happy and looking forward to my baby! However, I spend most nights crying and feeling like shit. I have the worst mood swings and not to mention, the nausea, the cramps, and the swelling.

Oh! And kiss you sense of privacy good bye. Between the doctor’s, midwives, and medical technicians you are going to be prodded poked and striped for scanning and measuring so many times you’ll feel like you may as well strip and put yourself on a conveyer belt. Hell, my first ultrasound they couldn’t get a good reading on the baby and I had to have a probe inserted virginally to get a better reading.

There is nothing ‘fun’ about most of what you go through in this 9 months. There is no way in hell Todd could have known what was making her sad if she didn’t tell him what was really on her mind.

Congratulations! The hormones are almost always super terrible in the first half. They were for me at least. The second half can be super hard or a breeze depending on what your skeletal system does. If you take a yoga class make sure it’s with someone who has a lot of experience with teaching pregnant women—preferably someone who specializes in it.

My pregnancy was awful. I had sciatica, heartburn that required prescription drugs, and I couldn’t sleep for more than 2 hours at a time. It also drudged up a lot of bad memories from my childhood and totally forced me to re-evaluate my relationship with my own parents (they are not safe people).

That said, about six years later it feels like a dream—enough that I’d brave through it again if it happened. Having a child isn’t for the meek (not if you want to be a good parent), but it sure can be spectacular!

Congratolences! (Because having a baby is exciting, but being pregnant is often an utterly miserable experience!) Like other people have said, some parts were definitely better than others. It’s worth it in the end, though! 🙂 Try some dark chocolate (at least 60% cocoa) for the mood swings, if you can stomach it. It seemed to help with me a little.

hey I resemble that remark! Being an adult doesn’t actually necessitate killing your joy and becoming a soulless zombie-robot. She’s an artist (so am I) getting to keep dyeing your hair is one of the perks.

Actually it is. When it comes to adoption, the mother usually does have the final say. It’s pretty shitty. There are some fathers who want their children and don’t get to gain custody without a LOT of work.

However, since she lied about what she’s done, Todd will be able to sue Andi for all the emotional stress she’s put him through, therapy bills for Amanda (b/c oh my GAWD she’s doing to need therapy), and can take full custody of Amanda at that point.

But during pregnancy and shortly after birth (as in still in the hospital), Todd has no say.

It actually depends on what state you live. A friend of mine had to make a choice to exclude the father (he didn’t know she was pregnant and was a dangerously abusive POS). In her state she was required to put a man’s name down on the birth certificate so she had to get a friend to stand in as the father.

There are states that have it set up so that a rapist gets the same custody rights over a child of rape as a regular father gets. So that the victim has to choose whether to abort the fetus or to risk being forced to hand over their kid to the rapist on a regular basis — even worse if he was a child abuser who for whatever reason didn’t get convicted for it.

If she never declared the father to the hospital then they would not need his consent. All she would have to say is ‘I don’t know who the dad is’ and bang Todd is not required for any choice making. However if Todd had been declared they could not have given Amanda away without his consent. So Amanda’s birth certificate would not have Todd’s name on it.

Not entirely: If they were married, then yes.
But they weren’t, so even if he was declared as the biological father, he didn’t have any say in anything until the mom recognizes his paternal rights officially.

I’m not sure if its the same as in Australias in other countries but it dose look to be the case in the USA from what I can research. Possession is after all 9 10ths of the law and if Anie had registered Todd as the biological father this could not have happened.

If the father is registered at the birth then they cant just hand the baby over without his consent. He would have to singe the surrender papers too. The only way Andi could have done this is if she did not name Todd as the father.

As much as it can feel like a woman has all the power in matters of children given how the laws are skewed in our favor. (the pros and cons of that are highly debatable and huge mess all its own.) She dose not have the right to just hand over a child to the state if it has biological family willing to care for it.
For example, if I wanted to surrender my child but my sister or my partners bother wanted to adopt my child they could actually contest the surrender and gain legal guardianship of said child.

By recognizing Todd as the biological father she is in fact giving him not just parental rights but it would also give the rest of his family legal standing to claim the child as well. If his name was printed on that birth certificate then legally she could not have done this. Todd would be legally required to singe that form.

Here in the Netherlands, registering yourself as a biological father, whilst not married to the biological mother, only results in you having to pay child support, but you still don’t get anything to say in any matter regarding said child, if the mom does not agree to that.

I love the fact that the height of Todd’s ambitions is to be a super at Wool-Mart. Only 8 years later, he’s doing pretty well for an architect, considering the training required. (I mean, he must be pretty junior in the firm, but already has clients all of his own.) I wonder if this was the kick in the pants he needed.

Todd, I think… (if Andi’s remembering right) was trying to put the best face on it, and cheer her up. But yeah, touchingly naive, there. He was still a kid, too. Good instincts, but a lot of growing up yet to do.

It probably hadn’t occurred to him at that point that he could become an architect; the dream he thought he was giving up to be a parent was more likely to do with the garage band he played in! It’s sweet that he was willing to plug away himself at advancing in the brain-deadening Woolmart, but imagined Andi still having the freedom to become a famous artist.

It is entirely possible that he started college Undecided and soon realized (with or without the help of a career counselor) that Architecture would be a great fit for him. He’d be far from the first, and would still result in a similar schedule.
And yeah, he’d have to be junior in the firm, but great skill can net you a lot regardless of position.

I know that Todd is going to find out at some point. However, how is this going to affect Amanda? You need to understand, she knew Todd came in looking to adopt and picked Selkie. Once she finds out her BIOLOGICAL FATHER picked Selkie over her, I sense HUGE resentment coming. That is just going to place more stress on the whole situation. I forsee a lot more drama in the future.

Yes, a lot of folks have been speculating on that. It may also change their relationship for the better as they will technically be sisters—especially if Todd decides to be involved (which I can’t imagine he won’t).

I’m surprised she carried the baby to term if she was going to not parent it anyway. Andi doesn’t strike me as being conservative, and if she was going to lie to Todd anyway, wouldn’t it have been easier to abort and claim a miscarriage? Miscarriages are very common.

Probably a combination of “feeling helpless and not ready to go through an option on her own” and “not wanting to hurt Todd, even by lying” that she got over by being convinced it was the best for the baby, with a side order of possibly not knowing what options she had or possibly not having a driver’s license of her own and being mobility-limited. I suspect she was too freaked out to do the research properly and wasn’t really able to communicate just how freaked out she really was, so she smiled and said “uh huh everything’s fine” while silently thinking her life is over.

And let’s be clear here, her MOM didn’t know how freaked out she was until she was in labor, so I think Todd can be forgiven for not noticing either since it seems clear she wasn’t communicating things clearly. (And as mentioned, there’s probably an element of “Todd wants to show he’s supportive and won’t leave her to be a single parent alone” and “there is a whooole lot of hormonal shit that occurs in pregnancy and they all might have thought that was the big concern.”)

Plus, she’s a teen and even if you’ve got supportive parents, the cultural stigma against abortion could be a strong deterrent. Particularly for a scared teenager who would likely be going to a clinic alone, probably dealing with protestors. I would not inflict that experience on my worst enemy.

It depends how far along she was when they found out. Also her mom strikes me as conservative…

But even so? She may not have wanted to get one. You don’t have to be conservative or even pro-life not to want to get an abortion. I personally would not ever have one even though I don’t want more children.

May the most exciting event of your pregnancy/birth be figuring out what relative to offend by _not_ bringing the baby home in the outfit they made/bought/picked out.
(Congratulations, and wishes for a boring/healthy time of it)

I stand by my previous statement that Andi still has a bit of maturing to do before she’s ready to be the mom Amanda needs.

And DRAT YOU DAVE! Stop making unsympathetic characters so “human” it’s hard to hate them (you’re doing a better job of it with Andi than you did with Principal Hobbit, but neither is a straw man/enemy).

I kind of feel like Ashton utimately ended up taking one on the chin for the sake of the story, compared to how other antagonists have been treated in the strip. But not every bad decision or hurtful action can BE justified or explained.

God damn, it’s going to be a trainwreck if that’s the case, though I’m not convinced that it is. Seriously, when Amanda finds out that Todd is her father? The explosion headed in Selkie’s direction wil make everything that’s happened before look minor by comparison. She’s already got a complex about the whole thing, and really, really doesn’t like Selkie for reasons that are nobody’s real fault… yeah. I reckon that’ll probably be the single ugliest blow-up in the strip to date.

Let us not forget the real reason Andi and Todd broke up. It wasn’t because she “lost” the baby. It was because she told Todd, an adopted person, that adoption was like “babysitting somebody else’s kid.”

That is not “the reason” they broke up (in fact Todd would be a pretty shallow guy to dump someone he’d been with for nine years over an offhand comment)
here is page 106 https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie106/ they are already broken up when he adopted Selkie
and then page 162 https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie162/ where Todd says they haven’t agreed on anything in years (including getting married) and that they are both different people

You’re right that it’s not THE reason they broke up.
It WAS the catalyst to make Todd think about everything else, and come to the conclusion they weren’t meant to be.
Plus, given Todd’s background, that adoption comment REALLY had to have hurt.

Poor Andi. I find the WAY she lied to be revealing. “She’s gone, Todd. She’s no longer with us.” Literally true — and for Andi, emotionally true, too. That’s genuine sadness, there, which I totally understand. Even if she was panicky and not ready to be a mother, even if she’d let her mother talk her into adoption, the baby was still the child of her body. And she was awash in postpartum hormones which are biologically designed to cement bonding between mother and child.

Yeah, no — she still shouldn’t have lied. News flash: adolescent brains which aren’t yet finished developing make stupid decisions. Especially when under major stress.

And, as someone acutely observed in the last comment thread, the longer you let a big lie stand, the harder it is to admit the truth. She’s tackling it now. Better late than never. Is she ready to be a mother? No, probably not, not yet. All the same, she’s now heading in the right direction for the first time in eight years. This is progress.

And I am thinking that, you know… Amanda is old enough to have some rights here. Even if the orphanage doesn’t think she should be just handed over, an eight-year-old has the right to know that her birth mother wants her.

Here’s another messed up thing, if a man has his name on a child’s birth certificate and then finds out he isn’t the real father, he would still have to pay child support just because his name is on there.

I don’t think anyone’s trying to say men can’t get custody at all, just that it’s massively slanted against them. As is the criminal justice system. Basically if you’re going to see a judge for any reason, you’d better be female.

just to make sure… what are you saying is untrue? the “men can’t get custody as well as women because “The System” is biased AGAINST them” trope… or the “if you go to court, you better be a female” one??

not arguing either way, i just would like to know which one you meant…

You know, I see a lot of people being down on Todd for “not noticing how sad she was”, and I wonder how many of you have actually dealt with pregnant women?

My wife and I, both, were completely not ready for our child. She really worried about things, and (aside from a few outside interferences that helped it along) actually suffered from a pretty nasty bit of depression. Maybe I, too, was just “wrapped up in myself”, then, by trying to keep optimistic about the situation, and to spur her towards being happy about the whole thing. Never in a million years would I have thought that my wife would have given up our daughter for adoption, or otherwise.

Depression is a common condition during pregnancy; in this case, it’s 100% Andi’s fault. She had, as people point out, nine months to talk about things. Todd was a willing father after reality set in (like it does for quite a few guys), but she remained silent on her feelings. I’m sure he noticed she was sad, but would -you- think that, without the other person telling you, that they didn’t want a child that they were carrying?

Maybe this strip just strikes a little too close to home, for me, to not feel at least a minor amount of kinship with Todd.

I’ve not only “dealt” with pregnant women. I was one. My husband looked out for me to the point of being nurturing. Having him by my side was blessing as the rest of my pregnancy was pretty bleak. Yes, he tried to make things fun, but was there to actually listen, and he frequently checked in on me. Granted my guy was about 25 years older than Todd was in the flashback, and he’s also an extraordinary man.

I think that Andi’s memory of what happened is likely influenced by her emotions at the time – her viewpoint makes Todd sound like an idiot Pollyanna, but we know he has more depth than that. She had serious negative feelings at the time so his emotions probably seemed more positive in contrast. He does acknowledge that he has grown up considerably since then, so maybe her characterization is not far off, but it still seems a little too one-sided.

Everyone is the good guy in their own head-movie, even when they’re doing the wrong thing. The emotions between two people are only truly in sync with communication. She should have told him “I’m scared, I don’t know if I want this, we should discuss all our options”. He should have listened to her and attempted to reassure her and assuage her fears but also supported any decision she made.

Hey, Dave – Don’t know if you can answer this or not, but is this flashback supposed to be accurate or is it in Andi-vision? I ask, because I’ve seen people speculate that she and Todd weren’t really behaving like that so I’m curious.

Everyone seems so sure that Andi is trying to get Todd back but I really don’t think so. She never wanted to marry him https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie162/ she got Amanda’s name tattooed on her arm not Todd’s https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie421/ and most importantly she hasn’t told him Any of this stuff. Why can’t anyone possibly think that she is actually trying to make reparations for her actions (however late or misguided they may be). I’m an adult adoptee, I’m nearly 40 and I would still be glad beyond words to hear from my birth mother and to be able to ask her directly “what happened?” maybe because of that I have more sympathy for Andi than some others here (although if you had asked teenaged me I would have spewed hurt/rage-filled diatribe about abandonment, my attitude have matured since then). Granted this is a very different story, Amanda is only 8 and still well into the hurt/enraged stage of grief, but Andi is also in grief-mode only she is stuck at ‘bargaining’.

Uhhhh no one does. Todd might have feelings for her but I’m not sure they’re all together romantic. Also Mina and Todd’s relationship is complicated. What with him not waiting for consent to kiss her and being his child’s teacher.

yes please, “love triangle” is the laziest sort of writing IMHO. Plus Andi doesn’t know a thing about Mina and Todd hasn’t done more than the surprise kiss (not cool). Actually now that I think back on the kiss I think that should be put in the “Todd is an oblivious goon” ledger along with “he didn’t notice Andi miserable for Nine Whole Months”, he doesn’t have a great track record so far in the whole “being sensitive to what females want” department.